2018 Lingua Franca Pinot Noir The Plow Estate Eola Amity

This looks to become a classic release of The Plow, with the deepest and longest flavors yet, ensuring longevity. As in 2017, it was composed of the finest lots of wine from the top of the vineyard where Larry Stone planted a refined, moderately productive Pinot Noir on the Gelderman-Jory soils that are the most expressive and nuanced of our vineyard site. The result is a powerful wine with luscious texture and length, a wine of contemplation and nuance. The long flavors are a complex of black cherry, dried herbs, black plum, red currant, black tea, rose petal, violets and minerals with a beautiful, long finish.

Vineyard Notes

The fruit for the 2018 The Plow comes from the best parts of Blocks 1 and 2, PN777 on Gelderman-Jory Complex, a type of shallow volcanic soil about 2-5 feet deep with a layer of large gravels that impart extra energy to the vines and create more complex and intense flavors. In 2018 this translated into a richly layered wine, dense wine, even though the fermentations were handled gently.

Production Notes

In this dense vintage the whole cluster fruit was kept to 20%. Fermentation took place with wild yeast in a combination of stainless steel and concrete tanks. The destemmed fruit is selected for whole berries by a special destemmer/sorter. No broken fruit goes into the cuvée. Cap management begins with gentle pump-overs, followed by traditional pigeage by foot, as needed. After fermentation, the wines age in 24% new and 76% neutral French oak barriques for 12 months followed by an additional 5 months in stainless steel tank to bring the cuvée together prior to bottling.